To Americans of a certain age, and advertising junkies, the phrase “It’s morning in America…” means Hal Riney’s voice and the sunny optimism of Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign. Not anymore. Here’s what we’re getting from an organization called “Citizens for the Republic.”
Here is the original, written and voiced by Hal Riney:
Citizens for the Republic, according to their website, has officers and directors who largely comprise a certain type of citizen: Folks who served in the Reagan administration and wrote biographies of him. As for the facts stated in the ad, PolitiFact says they’re accurate. But while the new ad draws a narrative parallel between today and the 1984 election, if you’re going to draw a comparison at the midterm, remember that things weren’t all that sunny at this point in Reagan’s first term.
Be careful with confusing “facts” and “statistics.” There is a lot of subjective and selective attribution to the Obama administration here. More like “Amnesia in America” as it seems the previous administration had nothing to do with the situation in which we find ourselves?
That’s a fair point, Blake. The PolitiFact assessment of the ad focuses on the numbers cited in the ad — the statistics, not the larger points the ad is trying to make or the inferences the ad makes based on those statistics.
There’s “Mourning” in America?
If Americans are in “Mourning” it’s because the jobs they once had are gone, meanwhile the cost of everything from food to a home to a college education continues to skyrocket. This isn’t the fault of one man or even one political party. It’s our fault for not holding our public officials and the corporations who back them accountable.
By the way, political advertising of this sort that purposefully distorts reality is shit. And like the shit that it is, we need to properly get rid of it.